301st Friday Blog Roundup

by Mel

Today is Friday the 13th. That only occurred to me because someone Tweeted about it earlier in the week. I also missed the fact that it was 8/9/10 on Monday. I am not the brightest woman when it comes to dates, though I have 2012 circled on my calendar not just because the world is ending that year, but because it’s also Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee.

Though I’m usually fairly anxious around certain dates, allowing my imagination to run towards grotesquely disturbing scenarios, I’ve never had big feelings concerning Friday the 13th. Even if I live … like … 2 miles from Camp Crystal Lake and I totally know someone who knows someone who is the cousin of the counselor who decapitated Mrs. Voorhees.

It’s one of those dates that I feel like I should have big feelings about. If I’m not worried, then I must be a fool.

You know how girls pinched each other’s arms with a Cootie Shot to ward off boy germs? Mentioning that it’s Friday the 13th feels like a horror Cootie Shot.

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The Weekly What If: In honour of spooky things and Friday the 13th — would you knowingly eat a whole spider (as in, you would need to pick it up and pop it in your mouth, unadorned by other ingredients) in order to gain an extra year of life? If the number was limitless, how many spiders would you eat?

Just to repeat an idea from last week — and I’ll keep annoying you with it until it catches on:

I set them out there simply because I hope that you too will read these posts if you missed them the first time, or nod in agreement if they moved you too, and then jump into the comment section on that post and let the author know.

300 (okay, 200) posts later, and that last concept, sadly, hasn’t truly caught on. So let’s remedy that for the next 200 posts. If you click over to read (and for the love, you should click over to read because you’d want people to do the same if a post from your blog was here and hopefully, I do a decent job of remembering who has been featured and who hasn’t and keeping it fresh each week), please leave the author a comment. Answer their question, let them know you’re abiding with them, tell them how hard you laughed. The Roundup has always been about community discussion. And it has been way too quiet.

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And now, the blogs…

All Aboard the Pity Boat has a post about her dad that I not only couldn’t stop thinking about, but made me burst into tears when I tried to tell Josh about it. I cannot tell you about it without ruining the gorgeous ending.

FtM Doctor has a post about a complicated situation; where one person wants a child and the other does not, and they are situationally infertile, adding an additional emotional layer to the decision. It is a post about reaching out to those around him, begging for the right words that will bring the peace of heart he craves with this situation. And it’s never easy; there are no perfect words. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t stop by an offer support anyway.

DI Mom has a post about the two sides — love and hate — that rises out of infertility and their need for donor insemination. Oh my G-d, it’s a gorgeous post; especially her ability to see the beauty in the small realities of life.

Fertility Foibles has a post about the two year anniversary of learning about their son. She writes, “When parents go to help at the orphanage, I get photos, videos and updates about how he’s doing – just like I would if I was carrying him in my uterus and going to the doctor and getting ultrasounds.” I love the analogy, and your heart aches for all of them in terms of the wait.

Lastly, A Garden for Butterflies has a post about rewriting your story. The moment in the post that gutted me came in the middle: “The story I was working on took such a dramatic change that it’s like a new book had to start. The story where I was in love and loved and joyfully waiting for my son stopped abruptly. The story of being admitted to the hospital, inducing labor for a pregnancy that I wanted, holding my dead son, then the years of grief could not be combined with the story of happily expecting a baby.” Do you really need more than that to click over and read the post in full? Then I promise you that she will help you reexamine your own life by the time she writes the last line.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th! Answer the Weekly What If. Thank you for participating in the Cake Extravaganza. Comment, pretty please. And lots of great posts to read.

I could eat a spider if the situation were right. I mean, if the end of my life was imminent, I’d eat those spiders by the handful. However, if it was just a guarantee that at some nebulous point in the future I would gain extra time, I’m not sure the motivation would be there.

BTW, the post from A Garden of Butterflies totally blew me away and, thanks to you, my blogroll is now one space longer.

I suppose it depends on the quality of the years I am gaining. If I am going to be perky and charming, like I am now, I would eat as many spiders as I was offered. In fact, Mel, I’d almost eat a spider right now just to creep you out. There’s a big one that lives out on the window behind the computer screen…

Ugh, I dont think I could even eat one spider. Blech. Possibly, if I could squish it first… ew. ew. ew. haha
Seriously though, I don’t think I would choose to add years to my life – god only knows what that would be inviting (extra years in a coma, in horrible pain, etc). If I could eat a spider to go back a year though – 29 here I come! – I’d probably get over the ew factor and eat a whole handful! 🙂

I’m honored that my post about my dad was one of the ones you mentioned. It makes me so happy that people have read it and thought fondly of him. He was a wonderful person and he deserves to be remembered.

Ugh, ew… No spider eating for me. I see a previous commenter posted about the spiders we eat in our sleep – I think we should get credit for those (for the record, this mouth breather has been trying in vain to sleep with her mouth closed for the past 15 or so years since that fact was learned).

We were married (legally — we had the party last weekend) on Friday the 13th of November last year, so I am claiming all Fridays the 13th as mini-anniversaries, to be celebrated in addition to our legal anniversary (11/13), our reception anniversary (8/7), and the anniversary we’ve used for the past 13 years (5/21). (Thanks for all the reasons to celebrate, oh marriage laws that exclude us!)

I would totally eat that spider. How many? How many you got? (I know the mature answer is something about the reasons living forever isn’t really what I want, but whatever.)

It would depend on my quality of life. If I was very old and feeble, prolly not. If I was still in good shape, probably. If it could take me to my prime (a fountain of youth combo shot), definitely. Awhole bowl.

You didn’t say alive or dead. The whole … crawling down my throat thing … ummm … yeah … I’m afraid this one is hopelessly hypothetical until it’s not. I just assume that I am capable of extreme mind-over-matter in extreme circumstances (death seems pretty extreme).

Just close your eyes and think of … Bear Grylls?

Spiders are good luck, you know. And as I told Eden once, the Native Americans have a great character called Grandmother Spider. She was a feminist:

A few years ago, I would have said: “no spiders, no way, no how”. But then I got really sick. And the treatment that I received was, to me, equivalent to eating like 10,000 spiders. Or more. Ew. So now, it’s not that eating spiders doesn’t seem so bad, it’s just that I’ve learned you do what you need to do when when death is a real possibility and you need to kick some serious butt to survive. And given that my life span might not be as long as other people because of all the treatment I had, eating spiders to gain some years seems like an okay trade off…

Friday the 13th always reminds me of the day I met my first real boyfriend. I know he thinks of me on this day, too, b/c he called me every time there was a Friday the 13th for years after. That was one Friday the 13th that was not unlucky. 🙂 …just random thought.

Who is Mel?

Melissa, otherwise known as Mel, The Stirrup Queen, and most recently nicknamed Lollipop Goldstein, has been blogging since 2006. In addition to STIRRUP QUEENS, she also writes the daily Lost and Found (LFCA). She also writes for BlogHer. You can join her on StumbleUpon. She's known to Twitter about her wonky ovaries.